SURF REPORT
CROUCHING LION
8 September 2009
You can best see the lion when you are four or five hundred yards offshore. Crouching Lion is a rocky hilltop above my sister’s house at Makaua, in Kaaawa, Oahu. If you line yourself dead-on with the lion so her little white house is right below it, you can stay on the best and most consistent peaks when the swell is running out of the northwest. There are five peaks on the lion, though the most northerly, which breaks weakly into Kahana Bay unless there is a big push, is not ridden much. I once paddled out at Crouching Lion with good Konas blowing and a lot of boys out, and ended up seeking the soul rights on Kahana: mo bettah. But a little sharky.
When I arrived in Honolulu my brother in law called from Kaaawa. He told me that Cameron said there was surf and that Cameron had even waxed up The Diff. This is undue deferential treatment, so upon arriving I made to paddle out to the reef even if just to look around for turtles. Cameron is the nephew-in-law. He thinks of me as a semi-icon I suppose, the game geezer. We ate fried spam sushi like holy communion, washed it down with vodka and guava juice on ice and hit the water.
“ I plan on surfing if we go all the way out there,” suggested the young Cameron, husband of Niece Number One.
“ Oh of course we will ride a few.” I didn’t want to kibosh the notion, surf unseen. And so we stroked out on our trek to the reef.
There were trades blowing and the reef was Maytagging around, so from the shore a hundred riders had slipped by on Kamehameha Highway thinking that the lion was not working. But there were no whitecaps on the sea, so the trades were meek. On we stroked, until we were on the reef dodging white water. I remembered that it is wise that whenever you find yourself on one of those tropical reefs with a lowered tide to paddle shallowly, with your little fingers barely wet, because the last thing you want to do is jam the ball of your hand into an urchin on the way out. No matter how good the waves are, your surfing pleasure will be diluted by the throbbing pain the poisonous spines induce.
With the trade windswells and Lord knows whatever else swinging in out of the deep blue, the reef crossing was arduous. Not the worst, but still a continual buffeting. The reef is broad, and no sooner did one wave break there was another behind it. Thus the entry was tiresome and eventually fraught with a few epithets. I thought that Cameron was right behind me, but discovered he had not passed the reef and was drawn down towards Kahana, where I saw him waving after I had ridden. After a few waves I realized he had still not crossed over and I could not see him so I took some whitewater back over to find him. I was drifting around wondering how big the shark was that had torn him in half when I turned to see him now on the far south end of the reef, surfing. He had paddled all the way down to the channel and gone out from the top, which is what I now entertained. I was so glad I did not have to explain to my sister how I had not kept better care of her son-in-law.
Once in the blue and surveying what’s really going down out there, the waves are really pretty good if you are in the right place when the groundswell comes in. The trade swell is playful but dissolves into mush. The groundswell is head high and is breaking on three distinct peaks. You want to get in and get down on those. The current takes us frequently into the netherzone, so we have to remind ourselves to keep moving up. The lefts were the best, or so I thought until I decided to go right and midway down the line observed myself making a long roundhouse cutback to flip back in, just like riding a bicycle.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
SURF REPORT Wipeout
SURF REPORT
7 September 2009
At 34,000 feet in the air the sea is as far away as Maude Smallin’s 6th grade blackboard. The clouds way-way down below are so close to the sea and far from us that they are like butt-smudges on the gray-green slate of the Pacific Ocean. We are going to Hawaii! Hawaii! “I wish you would come along with me.” Because its always nice to share the trip with a fellow traveler. It’s lovely and lonely. I lived here for four years. Long enough to be able to go to Eva Beach during a south swell when all the locals are warning me about the locals, and I say:
“ Nah, I am too old to mess with.”
When I show up there they just wave their shakabra fingers at me and grin from behind their sunglasses, then they just go back to their reveries in the cars they’ve had parked in the sand down there for decades. Maybe folks even inherit those beach heaps. Like nobody is going to show up at Eva unless they belong there, Brah, or they are crazy.
Old surf song lyrics remind me of Maudie’s son, Dale. Dale managed The Surfaris in the 1960’s and its Dale who cackles out that wicked Edgar Alan Poe inspired EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT! …at the beginning of the Surfari’s big hit of the same name off the album of the same name.
Maudie brought Dale to school so he could pull off his wild EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT… in person for us at a school assembly. Can you imagine how cornellacious it would be if we asked him to do it twice today? He did it twice then. Three times would have been too much. Dale looked a little too Pillsbury to have been surfing much back then. But he had that wild howl down and gave us a thrill. He didn’t seem to think it was lame to be doing it like that, a capella in some sterile auditorium. God bless his heart.
Then they cued the record for a little more entertainment, and we all sat there in our khaki uniforms and black ties, thirteen-year-old sergeants and little 4th grade corporals, listening to the Surfaris on some RCA Victor portable record player. The song was a vacant and inappropriate sound when heard out of place, when we were all crammed together in the formal circumstance. But out back of the barracks late in the afternoon that song would come on like an anthem when everybody’d be putting the gloss to the belt buckle with a little Brasso, and shining their clunky black shoes or big bad boots ( I never felt like ponying up for, nor swaggering in such, myself) back when we were somewhat under house arrest.
Then KRLA would play something else cool like Dick Dale’a Misirlu (Ah, ya habibi, Ah, ya leh-leli, ah!) or the great instrumental Apache by Jorgen Ingmann. It’s a shame that people won’t settle for s nice straightforward instrumental anymore these days, especially since the good lyricists can be counted on two hands. Back in 1963 you had to have a good strong instrumental in the repertoire. Words can be a bit overvalued. Even the Rolling Stones covered 2120 South Michigan Avenue. We were 27 miles from Corona Del Mar listening to all this but were feeling the vibe, all the same. Wipe Out was recorded where I grew up, in the lemon groves and grape vineyards of Cucamonga, at a place run by Frank Zappa.
7 September 2009
At 34,000 feet in the air the sea is as far away as Maude Smallin’s 6th grade blackboard. The clouds way-way down below are so close to the sea and far from us that they are like butt-smudges on the gray-green slate of the Pacific Ocean. We are going to Hawaii! Hawaii! “I wish you would come along with me.” Because its always nice to share the trip with a fellow traveler. It’s lovely and lonely. I lived here for four years. Long enough to be able to go to Eva Beach during a south swell when all the locals are warning me about the locals, and I say:
“ Nah, I am too old to mess with.”
When I show up there they just wave their shakabra fingers at me and grin from behind their sunglasses, then they just go back to their reveries in the cars they’ve had parked in the sand down there for decades. Maybe folks even inherit those beach heaps. Like nobody is going to show up at Eva unless they belong there, Brah, or they are crazy.
Old surf song lyrics remind me of Maudie’s son, Dale. Dale managed The Surfaris in the 1960’s and its Dale who cackles out that wicked Edgar Alan Poe inspired EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT! …at the beginning of the Surfari’s big hit of the same name off the album of the same name.
Maudie brought Dale to school so he could pull off his wild EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT… in person for us at a school assembly. Can you imagine how cornellacious it would be if we asked him to do it twice today? He did it twice then. Three times would have been too much. Dale looked a little too Pillsbury to have been surfing much back then. But he had that wild howl down and gave us a thrill. He didn’t seem to think it was lame to be doing it like that, a capella in some sterile auditorium. God bless his heart.
Then they cued the record for a little more entertainment, and we all sat there in our khaki uniforms and black ties, thirteen-year-old sergeants and little 4th grade corporals, listening to the Surfaris on some RCA Victor portable record player. The song was a vacant and inappropriate sound when heard out of place, when we were all crammed together in the formal circumstance. But out back of the barracks late in the afternoon that song would come on like an anthem when everybody’d be putting the gloss to the belt buckle with a little Brasso, and shining their clunky black shoes or big bad boots ( I never felt like ponying up for, nor swaggering in such, myself) back when we were somewhat under house arrest.
Then KRLA would play something else cool like Dick Dale’a Misirlu (Ah, ya habibi, Ah, ya leh-leli, ah!) or the great instrumental Apache by Jorgen Ingmann. It’s a shame that people won’t settle for s nice straightforward instrumental anymore these days, especially since the good lyricists can be counted on two hands. Back in 1963 you had to have a good strong instrumental in the repertoire. Words can be a bit overvalued. Even the Rolling Stones covered 2120 South Michigan Avenue. We were 27 miles from Corona Del Mar listening to all this but were feeling the vibe, all the same. Wipe Out was recorded where I grew up, in the lemon groves and grape vineyards of Cucamonga, at a place run by Frank Zappa.
SURF REPORT 3107
25 August 2009
South swell moving up all day. Towards four piled into Otter’s van with DocterDave and Pisser. Greg’s pissed-really heartbroken, because yesterday he drove away from C Street without tying down his beloved Robert August soft top and when he pulled onto the 33 he realized that somewhere between the lot and freeway it had sailed off. He never found it.
Rode flat on my back next to the boards watching backwards as the hot Eucalyptus branches waved in the wind with my head next to Dave’s knee while Pisser and Dave made homojokes on my behalf. I was glazed and tired. Phaneuf installed windows somewhere in the harbor all day and would meet us at the point, which held a low tide and head high to overhead sets when we arrived. CDIP was 4.1 at 14 from the 195.
Wolfpacked a peak at Stables. Everyone gave the Silverbacks elbow room with all our bigboard yooha bravado. We were catching all the waves in that zone so the crowd cleared nicely. Consistent surf rolling through. I nearly sent Pisser to the dentist with an errant footslip on a takeoff. He said he had thoughtlessly paused to admire the view when the Rusty suddenly came hurtling beakwards. The lefts were happening. Otter got a lot of long rights. Dave struggled doggedly.
As we made an exit I began to pick my way over the rocks toward shore and noted a woman combing her hair, appraising me as I tiptoed through the sand and boulders. Every time I took my eyes off the rocks she was still looking. I waited for Otter a minute then started back up the slippery stones. She cast further admiring looks while braiding her hair as she sat on the hood of her beefy black SUV and I rock stepped up to the embankment. As I stood up on the shelf I observed that it was the same woman who had snaked me two days previously.
“ What now?” I said to myself. “ She likes me?”
It was impossible to not give her a little wave when she kept beaming at me, though I felt like meat. “ What the hell?”
I caught Pisser by the elbow and told him about the woman. He gives a gander.
“ Hey, she’s cute,” he says.
Yellow police tape was strewn across the frontage road. Pisser said a guy had told him a woman had been struck in the road and killed. Her dog still lay dead on the pavement with the orange evening sun warming its lifeless fur. The woman was one of the homeless folks that wander up from the river bottom and hang around the bathroom. A wind-blown, scraggly couple sat clutching one another on the opposite sidewalk. They seemed too young to be bums, but I know age is no bar to poverty. There must have been nine cops leaning on their doors or milling about, staring at the spot where the dead woman had once lay.
26 August
Picked the CSA load early. Francisco and I had picked beans and squash the previous day, so gathering the vegetables was fairly easy. Had a good crew picking. Picked some nice melons and ate a bunch in the field. Ditched the FORAGER newsletter and rode down with Phaneuf to Knuckles. CDIP is going 3.0 from the 170 at 14 seconds from the south. Knuckies can probably be better but every element coalesced into satisfaction just short of perfection. Windless conditions on a rising tide near high with head high sets. Nailed a legitimate barrel going left- which was generally the only shoulder you could count on making. Phaneuf rode his little yellow flash. Crowd was minimal, with school back in session and summer on the wane.
Surfed again at Mondos in the afternoon on a lowering tide. Grace Buetti had been texting me about Mondos earlier, during the low tide. Said it was BIG! Grace was there with Belle, on Belle’s last day before going back to Colorado. Such earnestly dear young girls they are. Grace said she had misgivings about going out earlier. I said there was no need to prove anything.
Pisser showed up with Emilie. I wanted to run up to John and Mary’s to see if the waves I rode there in 1985 with Lee Gearhart were still breaking. Maybe Gearheart will still be up there on his little white diamond tail, scooting through on those hissing green walls from New Zealand. John and Greg decided to surf the Mondo’s shorebreak. Mondos reef looks like a scene from the Ventura County Fair: everyone’s here but the kids from Santa Paula with their show hogs.
There were waist high walls visible up toward Pitas. It was a long walk-not really that long but the longest walk to get to a surfspot this side of Sands Beach. The trek is so long people don’t want to make it. It takes ten to fifteen minutes. I would walk a lot farther to ride an empty sand-bottom point breaking shoulder high with not another soul within fifty yards of me. I passed two guys on longboards sitting on a clean little peak a hundred yards up from Mondos. They were barebacking it. When I got up to the Tudor House I paddled out. I was by myself . Gearheart had already gone in-twenty four years ago. He says he’s never surfed since he moved to New Mexico. He said the ocean was too crowded, too polluted. He was a good surfer. But there is no one out at John and Mary’s but me and there is ten to fifteen foot visibility in a lively sea with fish jumping and pelicans diving on them. The waves came at me and peaks broke here and then there, and closed out where earlier it had machined down the line. I took off into a weird looping bowl, made the drop, turned into a barrel and got hit in the head by the lip of the wave. As I tumbled backwards I began to remember that mussely rocks punctuate the Pitas bottom. I had seen none of them, so knew where none of them were. Perhaps I just missed getting a big mussel gash through the base of my skull. Rule Number Five: always land flat and protect your head from the rocks you can’t see.
I got five waves that all closed too quickly before me. If it had been beachbreak I would have been stoked to just get buried or make the takeoff, but it was the sand bottom of Pitas that can be on many days be so wonderfully walled and hollow, so the frustration was magnified by possibilities unattained merely because the swell was hitting straight from the south. The sun was going down. Instead of cruising down to Mondos I walked it. Pisser was going on about how he broke his board with his dick. There was no gyst to it until I saw he had delaminated the nose of the board he had borrowed from Otter. Greg had hit the rail with his pelvis just as both made contact with the sand on a Mondos sand whomper. He sat spread-legged in the sand, a pained but game look on his Jack of Spades face.
“ Not a good week for boards, man.”
“ No, but what hurts worse?”
“ Losing the Robert August, probably. Yeah, sure.”
27 August
Surfed. 105 degrees by one PM in the valley. Watered the nursery and motored to the coast, with John and Seed. Mondos was mushed but wet. I went out to the far reef and anchored in the eelgrass. A girl was surfing up there so I gave her all the room and waves she desired. There were few of them anyway. A ruddy guy in a handlebar mustache, maybe my age, which is 59, moves up on a long board and, observing the nose of the Rusty “ The World’s Longest Short Board” at 8’10”, he says: “ You’re not gonna catch anything on that thing.”
“ I guess I’ll do OK.” I reply. Thus challenged, by a man I can call Clancy O’Bannon, I scratch for every feeble comber that crawls my way and catch them all. I move left, go back to the right peak, looking for what’s not there. The best wave is a left. Phaneuf has called it quits early, and I am cooled off and ready to leave, so I ride one inside and then sit on the last bar, waiting. Clancy paddled up with a smug grin:
“ What’s the matter? Ya outta gas?”
In these circumstances I am never prepared to deal as dealt. Fonteyn or Phaneuf can reply so devastatingly to such insults so readily that they seem pre-primed. I suppose I had been forewarned by Clancy’s bucanneerist banter but I was so surprised at ridicule from an anonymous corner I was ill prepared. All I could say was “ Do you surf here all the time?’ Which obliquely might imply that Clancy was a bit of a buoy.
“ Yeah, this is my break. Where do you surf?” A fair question, since I had never seen Clumsy before. It allowed me enough time to discover some wit, even if subtle:
“ I guess I surf anywhere I want.”
28 August
Surfed. Swell surprisingly back up. Ojai was in full broil. Otterbein broke his board at Knuckleheads. Split the glass in the front third really, on one of those late drops. When I looked at it later it seemed like the foam was in tact, but a major deforming surgery would be required in order to re- launch. Otter has never cottoned to the Knuckle. You can tell from his tone of voice when we are making the where decision. I don’t think he even wants to go look at it because it will put Knuckleheads in play, but if the tide is high then its really the only call when the swell is small. And now his reluctance has borne out.
30 August
Did not surf the mysto swell. Picked over 2000 pounds of melons for the market and sundry boxes of beans and cucumbers on Saturday then got the store ready for Phaneuf’s birthday party. Delerium from the heat gave way to method. Watered up my beds of fall vegetables.
I knew the surf had to be something special because a 283 showed up and went 7.5. A northwest swell had been forecast, but not waves going nearly double overhead. Still, my inner Calvinist shouldered the mighty wheel of commerce. I spray the deck down to get rid of the food debris prior to the dinner rush, then head home to wash dust off myself.
Phaneuf shows up with pie plate eyeballs. He went to with nobody out and surfed til he could not paddle any more. There was also a 3.5 out of the south still but that 283 was the headline from Rincon to Oxnard Shores. Da-umn! Olivia made some really good birthday cakes. Francisco came to the party a little ripped. Sus Corez played with her band. Phaneuf diligently kept himself from bawling on about how tremendous the surf had been, but he gave himself away, walking around with a face like a puffer fish, holding something very, very big in check.
1 September 2009
Drove late with Pisser to low tide Knuckles breaking mostly from a west windswell and played tag with a truly Knucked-up crowd, including a huge, fries-eating specimen in a Fu Manchu who was probably an all-league down-lineman for the Nordhoff Rangers Championship team of 2003. He’s cruising around in the impact zone with swimfins and a boogie. I call him Nick Knuckles. He sort of sticks to me like an overly curious seal. Later his brother, Nobby, paddled out, all lobsterized and looking a bit beered up. I begin to slowly churn up the coast, chasing Pisser, who is now riding a nice big Huerta I bought from a neighbor for $250 a few years back, just to have a stash. Now he is enamored of the cruising power of the Huerta and the loss of his Robert August stings not so much.
Phaneuf shows, but he stays on the beach pitching the ball for Seed. He caught the swell earlier down at when things were perfect, so he doesn’t want to tarnish the tidy chunk of stoke he’s scored.
A bodysurfer bobbing near us keeps yelling at his two youngsters to:
WATCH OUT FOR THE SURFERS, BOYS!
But he’s facing us while howling out a warning. The kids are in the white water inside, blissing around. So he is effectively telling US to WATCH OUT FOR THE KIDS INSIDE!
I paddle on towards Trader Joes. I take Pisser’s heap home so he and John may continue dialoguing. I need to fire my sprinklers up. Its been another bake-off in Mira Monte. Hodge says it was 109 at his house.
2 September
Swell mighty diminished but I bring my gear to Oxnard anyway while I am picking up boxes at Calpine. I want to put all my onions and shallots in good storage for the fall. Phaneuf is going to head for a paddle in the harbor, but has nothing else going so we convene at Shores to observe a very nice day to go water skiing in the Santa Barbara Channel.
He is sure that will have waves. We arrive and there are waves. There is one guy out and its good enough for forty. It’s the first time I have ever surfed and it’s a daunting. The breaks at are sort of a steroidal Knuckleheads. The waves come right out of deep water, then leap on a bar and pitch. I whet my buds on a few small crashers, then go for the blue, and get pounded. Memo: need a shorter board for some of this daring-do. Ever the Mayor, Phaneuf chats up more of his many acquaintances. He used to live here, for 11 years, 37 steps to the edge of the water. Phaneuf is very conscious of his food intakes. He cannot qualify as a true food freak, ala ortholexia standards. He merely eats fruits and vegetables. A rather silent semi-vegan. Many of his friends, like Ed, who paddles out for a little late wall chasing, are also becoming more food conscious. John and Ed talk about nuts in smoothies and such, and when John mentions to Ed that I own a health food store, Ed takes notice. If Ed only knew I had wolfed half a Subway Italian special on the way over, and generally have very little control over my own ortho, he may not have had such a genuflective reaction.
3 September 2009
I have four full days left before I go to Hawaii so I gotta make the time count. Every procrastination is an immediacy. The list in my head is longer than any list I can write. We make short work of he CSA boxes, casually grind and then I retreat to do accounting chores at my desk. I have sworn an oath to not let the ocean tempt me. I won’t even look at CDIP, so firm is my resolve.
There’s a text bugle. I don’t know if I want to look at it, but I have to. It’s Phaneuf. “ Take a look at the cam,” he says. I look. C Street is running shoulder high on glass with plenty of waves from the steep south. Looks as delicious as a big slice of cold watermelon. CDIP does not confirm anything but a steep angled swell at nine seconds from the 155. Jimena’s last little gyration just west of Cape Vizcaino has spun a swell at us. It’s out of my hands now. We are going to Pitas. Its 97 degrees again, as for an alibi. John paddled Pitas the day before and ran into waist high sets on the Tudor Bar. Some teenage bikini girls were frolicking in an all time go-out. He even rode it on his paddle racer. My gear is elsewhere. I don’t even know where my wetsuit box is. Olivia walks in coincidentally with an old spring suit she found on a shelf outside. An omen for good. I probably left it there four years ago. Phaneuf swings by my house to pick up the Yater.
Mondos is still, bright and hot. “ One bad thing about your box is that we don’t have any sunblock.”
I know I will toast. “ Maybe one of these kind souls can share some of theirs.”
No one would deny Phaneuf a favor. Its like they know intuitively that The Mayor will repay them, or send a deputy to do so. A nice little surf family has a big bottle of the good stuff, and we get our squeezes. Their little boy says that Seed is a good dog and runs his little hands through his hot fur. He’s right about that. And crazy to fetch.
The tide at Pitas is dropping. We run into Rich McGrath on the beach; he’ll come out later on his ski. He says he’s been watching it all day. Pisser is coming too. He doesn’t need much prodding. Ojai is still on a spit. Little lines are sweeping in from the Tudor bar. It’s not more than waist high, but it’s ineffably satisfying: spud high walls in clear green water over golden sand. Phaneuf gets a 20 second ride and decides we better start recording the fifteen-second or better rides. I get a twelve. He rides far down the beach on a perfect wall until he’s a speck. It’s like a thirty.
Pisser shows up on Phaneuf’s stand up paddler. We share this and that and pull a three way for over fifteen seconds. We don’t mind a little lull. Then with rebel yells and goal line cheerleading the sets show again. McGrath is up at John and Mary’s pulling little spinners when he takes off. Pisser’s says he’s tired, but I won’t complain about nothing.
25 August 2009
South swell moving up all day. Towards four piled into Otter’s van with DocterDave and Pisser. Greg’s pissed-really heartbroken, because yesterday he drove away from C Street without tying down his beloved Robert August soft top and when he pulled onto the 33 he realized that somewhere between the lot and freeway it had sailed off. He never found it.
Rode flat on my back next to the boards watching backwards as the hot Eucalyptus branches waved in the wind with my head next to Dave’s knee while Pisser and Dave made homojokes on my behalf. I was glazed and tired. Phaneuf installed windows somewhere in the harbor all day and would meet us at the point, which held a low tide and head high to overhead sets when we arrived. CDIP was 4.1 at 14 from the 195.
Wolfpacked a peak at Stables. Everyone gave the Silverbacks elbow room with all our bigboard yooha bravado. We were catching all the waves in that zone so the crowd cleared nicely. Consistent surf rolling through. I nearly sent Pisser to the dentist with an errant footslip on a takeoff. He said he had thoughtlessly paused to admire the view when the Rusty suddenly came hurtling beakwards. The lefts were happening. Otter got a lot of long rights. Dave struggled doggedly.
As we made an exit I began to pick my way over the rocks toward shore and noted a woman combing her hair, appraising me as I tiptoed through the sand and boulders. Every time I took my eyes off the rocks she was still looking. I waited for Otter a minute then started back up the slippery stones. She cast further admiring looks while braiding her hair as she sat on the hood of her beefy black SUV and I rock stepped up to the embankment. As I stood up on the shelf I observed that it was the same woman who had snaked me two days previously.
“ What now?” I said to myself. “ She likes me?”
It was impossible to not give her a little wave when she kept beaming at me, though I felt like meat. “ What the hell?”
I caught Pisser by the elbow and told him about the woman. He gives a gander.
“ Hey, she’s cute,” he says.
Yellow police tape was strewn across the frontage road. Pisser said a guy had told him a woman had been struck in the road and killed. Her dog still lay dead on the pavement with the orange evening sun warming its lifeless fur. The woman was one of the homeless folks that wander up from the river bottom and hang around the bathroom. A wind-blown, scraggly couple sat clutching one another on the opposite sidewalk. They seemed too young to be bums, but I know age is no bar to poverty. There must have been nine cops leaning on their doors or milling about, staring at the spot where the dead woman had once lay.
26 August
Picked the CSA load early. Francisco and I had picked beans and squash the previous day, so gathering the vegetables was fairly easy. Had a good crew picking. Picked some nice melons and ate a bunch in the field. Ditched the FORAGER newsletter and rode down with Phaneuf to Knuckles. CDIP is going 3.0 from the 170 at 14 seconds from the south. Knuckies can probably be better but every element coalesced into satisfaction just short of perfection. Windless conditions on a rising tide near high with head high sets. Nailed a legitimate barrel going left- which was generally the only shoulder you could count on making. Phaneuf rode his little yellow flash. Crowd was minimal, with school back in session and summer on the wane.
Surfed again at Mondos in the afternoon on a lowering tide. Grace Buetti had been texting me about Mondos earlier, during the low tide. Said it was BIG! Grace was there with Belle, on Belle’s last day before going back to Colorado. Such earnestly dear young girls they are. Grace said she had misgivings about going out earlier. I said there was no need to prove anything.
Pisser showed up with Emilie. I wanted to run up to John and Mary’s to see if the waves I rode there in 1985 with Lee Gearhart were still breaking. Maybe Gearheart will still be up there on his little white diamond tail, scooting through on those hissing green walls from New Zealand. John and Greg decided to surf the Mondo’s shorebreak. Mondos reef looks like a scene from the Ventura County Fair: everyone’s here but the kids from Santa Paula with their show hogs.
There were waist high walls visible up toward Pitas. It was a long walk-not really that long but the longest walk to get to a surfspot this side of Sands Beach. The trek is so long people don’t want to make it. It takes ten to fifteen minutes. I would walk a lot farther to ride an empty sand-bottom point breaking shoulder high with not another soul within fifty yards of me. I passed two guys on longboards sitting on a clean little peak a hundred yards up from Mondos. They were barebacking it. When I got up to the Tudor House I paddled out. I was by myself . Gearheart had already gone in-twenty four years ago. He says he’s never surfed since he moved to New Mexico. He said the ocean was too crowded, too polluted. He was a good surfer. But there is no one out at John and Mary’s but me and there is ten to fifteen foot visibility in a lively sea with fish jumping and pelicans diving on them. The waves came at me and peaks broke here and then there, and closed out where earlier it had machined down the line. I took off into a weird looping bowl, made the drop, turned into a barrel and got hit in the head by the lip of the wave. As I tumbled backwards I began to remember that mussely rocks punctuate the Pitas bottom. I had seen none of them, so knew where none of them were. Perhaps I just missed getting a big mussel gash through the base of my skull. Rule Number Five: always land flat and protect your head from the rocks you can’t see.
I got five waves that all closed too quickly before me. If it had been beachbreak I would have been stoked to just get buried or make the takeoff, but it was the sand bottom of Pitas that can be on many days be so wonderfully walled and hollow, so the frustration was magnified by possibilities unattained merely because the swell was hitting straight from the south. The sun was going down. Instead of cruising down to Mondos I walked it. Pisser was going on about how he broke his board with his dick. There was no gyst to it until I saw he had delaminated the nose of the board he had borrowed from Otter. Greg had hit the rail with his pelvis just as both made contact with the sand on a Mondos sand whomper. He sat spread-legged in the sand, a pained but game look on his Jack of Spades face.
“ Not a good week for boards, man.”
“ No, but what hurts worse?”
“ Losing the Robert August, probably. Yeah, sure.”
27 August
Surfed. 105 degrees by one PM in the valley. Watered the nursery and motored to the coast, with John and Seed. Mondos was mushed but wet. I went out to the far reef and anchored in the eelgrass. A girl was surfing up there so I gave her all the room and waves she desired. There were few of them anyway. A ruddy guy in a handlebar mustache, maybe my age, which is 59, moves up on a long board and, observing the nose of the Rusty “ The World’s Longest Short Board” at 8’10”, he says: “ You’re not gonna catch anything on that thing.”
“ I guess I’ll do OK.” I reply. Thus challenged, by a man I can call Clancy O’Bannon, I scratch for every feeble comber that crawls my way and catch them all. I move left, go back to the right peak, looking for what’s not there. The best wave is a left. Phaneuf has called it quits early, and I am cooled off and ready to leave, so I ride one inside and then sit on the last bar, waiting. Clancy paddled up with a smug grin:
“ What’s the matter? Ya outta gas?”
In these circumstances I am never prepared to deal as dealt. Fonteyn or Phaneuf can reply so devastatingly to such insults so readily that they seem pre-primed. I suppose I had been forewarned by Clancy’s bucanneerist banter but I was so surprised at ridicule from an anonymous corner I was ill prepared. All I could say was “ Do you surf here all the time?’ Which obliquely might imply that Clancy was a bit of a buoy.
“ Yeah, this is my break. Where do you surf?” A fair question, since I had never seen Clumsy before. It allowed me enough time to discover some wit, even if subtle:
“ I guess I surf anywhere I want.”
28 August
Surfed. Swell surprisingly back up. Ojai was in full broil. Otterbein broke his board at Knuckleheads. Split the glass in the front third really, on one of those late drops. When I looked at it later it seemed like the foam was in tact, but a major deforming surgery would be required in order to re- launch. Otter has never cottoned to the Knuckle. You can tell from his tone of voice when we are making the where decision. I don’t think he even wants to go look at it because it will put Knuckleheads in play, but if the tide is high then its really the only call when the swell is small. And now his reluctance has borne out.
30 August
Did not surf the mysto swell. Picked over 2000 pounds of melons for the market and sundry boxes of beans and cucumbers on Saturday then got the store ready for Phaneuf’s birthday party. Delerium from the heat gave way to method. Watered up my beds of fall vegetables.
I knew the surf had to be something special because a 283 showed up and went 7.5. A northwest swell had been forecast, but not waves going nearly double overhead. Still, my inner Calvinist shouldered the mighty wheel of commerce. I spray the deck down to get rid of the food debris prior to the dinner rush, then head home to wash dust off myself.
Phaneuf shows up with pie plate eyeballs. He went to with nobody out and surfed til he could not paddle any more. There was also a 3.5 out of the south still but that 283 was the headline from Rincon to Oxnard Shores. Da-umn! Olivia made some really good birthday cakes. Francisco came to the party a little ripped. Sus Corez played with her band. Phaneuf diligently kept himself from bawling on about how tremendous the surf had been, but he gave himself away, walking around with a face like a puffer fish, holding something very, very big in check.
1 September 2009
Drove late with Pisser to low tide Knuckles breaking mostly from a west windswell and played tag with a truly Knucked-up crowd, including a huge, fries-eating specimen in a Fu Manchu who was probably an all-league down-lineman for the Nordhoff Rangers Championship team of 2003. He’s cruising around in the impact zone with swimfins and a boogie. I call him Nick Knuckles. He sort of sticks to me like an overly curious seal. Later his brother, Nobby, paddled out, all lobsterized and looking a bit beered up. I begin to slowly churn up the coast, chasing Pisser, who is now riding a nice big Huerta I bought from a neighbor for $250 a few years back, just to have a stash. Now he is enamored of the cruising power of the Huerta and the loss of his Robert August stings not so much.
Phaneuf shows, but he stays on the beach pitching the ball for Seed. He caught the swell earlier down at when things were perfect, so he doesn’t want to tarnish the tidy chunk of stoke he’s scored.
A bodysurfer bobbing near us keeps yelling at his two youngsters to:
WATCH OUT FOR THE SURFERS, BOYS!
But he’s facing us while howling out a warning. The kids are in the white water inside, blissing around. So he is effectively telling US to WATCH OUT FOR THE KIDS INSIDE!
I paddle on towards Trader Joes. I take Pisser’s heap home so he and John may continue dialoguing. I need to fire my sprinklers up. Its been another bake-off in Mira Monte. Hodge says it was 109 at his house.
2 September
Swell mighty diminished but I bring my gear to Oxnard anyway while I am picking up boxes at Calpine. I want to put all my onions and shallots in good storage for the fall. Phaneuf is going to head for a paddle in the harbor, but has nothing else going so we convene at Shores to observe a very nice day to go water skiing in the Santa Barbara Channel.
He is sure that will have waves. We arrive and there are waves. There is one guy out and its good enough for forty. It’s the first time I have ever surfed and it’s a daunting. The breaks at are sort of a steroidal Knuckleheads. The waves come right out of deep water, then leap on a bar and pitch. I whet my buds on a few small crashers, then go for the blue, and get pounded. Memo: need a shorter board for some of this daring-do. Ever the Mayor, Phaneuf chats up more of his many acquaintances. He used to live here, for 11 years, 37 steps to the edge of the water. Phaneuf is very conscious of his food intakes. He cannot qualify as a true food freak, ala ortholexia standards. He merely eats fruits and vegetables. A rather silent semi-vegan. Many of his friends, like Ed, who paddles out for a little late wall chasing, are also becoming more food conscious. John and Ed talk about nuts in smoothies and such, and when John mentions to Ed that I own a health food store, Ed takes notice. If Ed only knew I had wolfed half a Subway Italian special on the way over, and generally have very little control over my own ortho, he may not have had such a genuflective reaction.
3 September 2009
I have four full days left before I go to Hawaii so I gotta make the time count. Every procrastination is an immediacy. The list in my head is longer than any list I can write. We make short work of he CSA boxes, casually grind and then I retreat to do accounting chores at my desk. I have sworn an oath to not let the ocean tempt me. I won’t even look at CDIP, so firm is my resolve.
There’s a text bugle. I don’t know if I want to look at it, but I have to. It’s Phaneuf. “ Take a look at the cam,” he says. I look. C Street is running shoulder high on glass with plenty of waves from the steep south. Looks as delicious as a big slice of cold watermelon. CDIP does not confirm anything but a steep angled swell at nine seconds from the 155. Jimena’s last little gyration just west of Cape Vizcaino has spun a swell at us. It’s out of my hands now. We are going to Pitas. Its 97 degrees again, as for an alibi. John paddled Pitas the day before and ran into waist high sets on the Tudor Bar. Some teenage bikini girls were frolicking in an all time go-out. He even rode it on his paddle racer. My gear is elsewhere. I don’t even know where my wetsuit box is. Olivia walks in coincidentally with an old spring suit she found on a shelf outside. An omen for good. I probably left it there four years ago. Phaneuf swings by my house to pick up the Yater.
Mondos is still, bright and hot. “ One bad thing about your box is that we don’t have any sunblock.”
I know I will toast. “ Maybe one of these kind souls can share some of theirs.”
No one would deny Phaneuf a favor. Its like they know intuitively that The Mayor will repay them, or send a deputy to do so. A nice little surf family has a big bottle of the good stuff, and we get our squeezes. Their little boy says that Seed is a good dog and runs his little hands through his hot fur. He’s right about that. And crazy to fetch.
The tide at Pitas is dropping. We run into Rich McGrath on the beach; he’ll come out later on his ski. He says he’s been watching it all day. Pisser is coming too. He doesn’t need much prodding. Ojai is still on a spit. Little lines are sweeping in from the Tudor bar. It’s not more than waist high, but it’s ineffably satisfying: spud high walls in clear green water over golden sand. Phaneuf gets a 20 second ride and decides we better start recording the fifteen-second or better rides. I get a twelve. He rides far down the beach on a perfect wall until he’s a speck. It’s like a thirty.
Pisser shows up on Phaneuf’s stand up paddler. We share this and that and pull a three way for over fifteen seconds. We don’t mind a little lull. Then with rebel yells and goal line cheerleading the sets show again. McGrath is up at John and Mary’s pulling little spinners when he takes off. Pisser’s says he’s tired, but I won’t complain about nothing.
SURF REPORT The Inner Kook
SURF REPORT
The Inner Kook
21 August 2009
CDIP showed a 2.1 at 20 from the 195 so I chased it with Otter. Looked at unrideable Nucklehead. Chugged down to the cove at California Street, sat on the wall watching three guys not really ride, but if the tide was lower it would have been better. Went home dry.
22 August 2009
Jonesing for the GodAlmighty swell. No surf for a week. Now its arrived. Gotta pick for the farmers market. Up early and run through the common chore tedium. Load the drawers with cash. ThisThatThisThat. Load the truck with boxes. Gotta dump and clean the compost buckets, haul the perishables to the shade. Water the nursery. Pick cucumbers. Prince and Otter already heading down to the point. They plan to get it with the tide low and coming up, i.e., perfectly timed. Eventually I plan to head down with Phaneuf. Now it’s 2.7 feet from 185 degrees south with 17 second intervals.
Phaneuf’s Monika, Katy-O and Olivia have been eating biscotti and drinking espresso, picking basil in full chuckle. They independently decided to wear their colored woolen caps. Calvinism and Hedonism tear my psyche but I go anyway, figuring I can catch up in the early PM once my Jones is doused. Down Santa Ana to the 33, Phaneuf is receiving and relaying reports on his two-way wrist radio. I stare at the DIP like a little digital talisman as if expecting mysteries to be revealed.
The Nuckle is walled. John’s friend Dave is just getting out of the water. Dave eats at the Farmer and the Cook every lunch apparently, but I do not recognize him wet in neoprene without a sandwich in his hand. Dave says it was “pretty good an hour ago.” Drawing scant comfort, we impetuously haul to Ventura Point. Otter and Prince are buttoning up their shirts, and Pisser says it was “ pretty good an hour ago.” The tide is beginning to swamp The Point.
“ Looks like we better get out there if we’re going to before this gets funky.”
I agree, but its already getting funky. On a 5.5 foot tide, small waves that might have been ridden slosh onto the rocks. Larger waves stand and wobble toward shore uncertainly like your drunk grandpa. The larger sets today have three waves per, so forty people chase three waves breaking on two or three peaks, resulting in heightened competitive anxiety. I don’t recognize many people. A young guy is doing well inside on a long board so I figure to get some modest waves under my belt before I paddle out to park with the other buoys. Everybody is sitting. Inside its pretty Maytag, with the churning backwash slopping up the incoming wave. There’s a lot of depressing bouncing around. I snag a couple of sudden chest high lefts that are somewhat rewarding. I should have stayed there.
We wander to (the) Pipe “ The only show in town.” Says Phaneuf. I find myself in miraculous position on a fair comber and as I push off, the board cleaves through some kelp ( its that close to shore) entangling my right hand. The ensuing struggle and ignominious flop alter lineup chemistry perceptibly.
After a few sets, I am back at the gate, paddling for a nice waist high slosher. A woman to my right has been surfing out there for awhile. She begins to paddle as well, in rather close proximity, and as the rapturous moment arrives in which to launch, she turns to me and announces:
“ I’ve got it.”
I had remained so shamed by going full Doofus on my previous attempt that I could say nothing back but: “Go then.”
I had full position and had been paddling earlier, so my case for primacy was fairly air-tight, except for the Doofus Factor. I plainly did not deserve the wave, especially if so few of them were coming our way. Waste not want not, eh, cherie?
So I pulled up, dragging the tail of the board down into the wave in an abject demonstration of undignified defeat. The wave surged around my knees. What should I have done, dropped in on her tail block?
I had been snaked by a lady who had announced the snaking like some mild rattler on the side of the path, as if to say “ Here I am!”
And of course I had let her on. Rattlers own the path. She was a stylish, fit gal, perhaps forty-five years old, who had surfed well with nice equipment, including one of those Patagonia water caps I thought I wanted-until being sullied by a woman wearing one. From afar I later envied the wave she laid on her jazzy arch-stance for.
Stung with condemnation I meandered back into the anonymous lineup, then suddenly brightened with an absurd thought. I should just write about my defeat in order to rescue the entire event from contemptible mediocrity. The opportunity for self-ridicule usually yields a whiff of comedy. Nontheless, I could not erase that large yellow D that had been stenciled on my back. It was as if I could read the thoughts of some in the thinning crowd: Doofus! Kook! Geezer! But no doubt they paid me little mind or merely pitied me.
We retreated to the middle break, fully Maytagging now at peak tide. I prayed for any feeble roller to appear and send me to shore. My last wave made up for nothing, but I rode it without injuring myself or others, nor was further humiliated.
The score, based on a three wave minimum, left me feeling short two. I had ridden six waves in one hour, flopped one, gotten pounded from behind on a late take-off, ridden two zippy lefts and one fair right, and lost innumerable waves on the snaking. It was like hitting into the water hazard on the final hole in golf.
24 August 2009
In the evening of the Great Snaking, the swell registered 3.5 from the 180. Sunday morning, I ferried produce to the farmers market, built the stall with O and Katy and left with John at 10. Phaneuf determined from various detailed reports that Hollywood was out, Hueneme was out, the wind forecast was miraculously not showing up, and that there was a big contest at Shores. So it was to be Nuckles on a burgeoning tide, which was suitable. After my last rising tide go-out at Ventura Point I was not ready to subject myself to another crowded moment in the washtub.
Ojai State Beach was a paradise of glassy surf as we hove to, next to Brian Hugheart, an old friend of John’s. Brian and I are the same age more or less. Brian had given John his first board and dated his sister. Brian has an 8 foot fish that seems like a nice template to try. Wide and dense with foam. The waves are about as good as it gets. We are specifically more towards Trader Joes than Nuckleheads. Its all going off between two and four feet, head high or bigger on the set waves. Phaneuf suggests that riding these semi-closeouts will sharpen our “ chops” when the winter arrives. Lots of people lots of peaks. I get a enough waves to redeem my bent soul from yesterday and then put some in the bank . The lefhanded drops yield excitement.. If the place needs a name later I can always call that medium bar Redemptions. There is a big dip in the asphalt down there I nearly rolled into once.
The Inner Kook
21 August 2009
CDIP showed a 2.1 at 20 from the 195 so I chased it with Otter. Looked at unrideable Nucklehead. Chugged down to the cove at California Street, sat on the wall watching three guys not really ride, but if the tide was lower it would have been better. Went home dry.
22 August 2009
Jonesing for the GodAlmighty swell. No surf for a week. Now its arrived. Gotta pick for the farmers market. Up early and run through the common chore tedium. Load the drawers with cash. ThisThatThisThat. Load the truck with boxes. Gotta dump and clean the compost buckets, haul the perishables to the shade. Water the nursery. Pick cucumbers. Prince and Otter already heading down to the point. They plan to get it with the tide low and coming up, i.e., perfectly timed. Eventually I plan to head down with Phaneuf. Now it’s 2.7 feet from 185 degrees south with 17 second intervals.
Phaneuf’s Monika, Katy-O and Olivia have been eating biscotti and drinking espresso, picking basil in full chuckle. They independently decided to wear their colored woolen caps. Calvinism and Hedonism tear my psyche but I go anyway, figuring I can catch up in the early PM once my Jones is doused. Down Santa Ana to the 33, Phaneuf is receiving and relaying reports on his two-way wrist radio. I stare at the DIP like a little digital talisman as if expecting mysteries to be revealed.
The Nuckle is walled. John’s friend Dave is just getting out of the water. Dave eats at the Farmer and the Cook every lunch apparently, but I do not recognize him wet in neoprene without a sandwich in his hand. Dave says it was “pretty good an hour ago.” Drawing scant comfort, we impetuously haul to Ventura Point. Otter and Prince are buttoning up their shirts, and Pisser says it was “ pretty good an hour ago.” The tide is beginning to swamp The Point.
“ Looks like we better get out there if we’re going to before this gets funky.”
I agree, but its already getting funky. On a 5.5 foot tide, small waves that might have been ridden slosh onto the rocks. Larger waves stand and wobble toward shore uncertainly like your drunk grandpa. The larger sets today have three waves per, so forty people chase three waves breaking on two or three peaks, resulting in heightened competitive anxiety. I don’t recognize many people. A young guy is doing well inside on a long board so I figure to get some modest waves under my belt before I paddle out to park with the other buoys. Everybody is sitting. Inside its pretty Maytag, with the churning backwash slopping up the incoming wave. There’s a lot of depressing bouncing around. I snag a couple of sudden chest high lefts that are somewhat rewarding. I should have stayed there.
We wander to (the) Pipe “ The only show in town.” Says Phaneuf. I find myself in miraculous position on a fair comber and as I push off, the board cleaves through some kelp ( its that close to shore) entangling my right hand. The ensuing struggle and ignominious flop alter lineup chemistry perceptibly.
After a few sets, I am back at the gate, paddling for a nice waist high slosher. A woman to my right has been surfing out there for awhile. She begins to paddle as well, in rather close proximity, and as the rapturous moment arrives in which to launch, she turns to me and announces:
“ I’ve got it.”
I had remained so shamed by going full Doofus on my previous attempt that I could say nothing back but: “Go then.”
I had full position and had been paddling earlier, so my case for primacy was fairly air-tight, except for the Doofus Factor. I plainly did not deserve the wave, especially if so few of them were coming our way. Waste not want not, eh, cherie?
So I pulled up, dragging the tail of the board down into the wave in an abject demonstration of undignified defeat. The wave surged around my knees. What should I have done, dropped in on her tail block?
I had been snaked by a lady who had announced the snaking like some mild rattler on the side of the path, as if to say “ Here I am!”
And of course I had let her on. Rattlers own the path. She was a stylish, fit gal, perhaps forty-five years old, who had surfed well with nice equipment, including one of those Patagonia water caps I thought I wanted-until being sullied by a woman wearing one. From afar I later envied the wave she laid on her jazzy arch-stance for.
Stung with condemnation I meandered back into the anonymous lineup, then suddenly brightened with an absurd thought. I should just write about my defeat in order to rescue the entire event from contemptible mediocrity. The opportunity for self-ridicule usually yields a whiff of comedy. Nontheless, I could not erase that large yellow D that had been stenciled on my back. It was as if I could read the thoughts of some in the thinning crowd: Doofus! Kook! Geezer! But no doubt they paid me little mind or merely pitied me.
We retreated to the middle break, fully Maytagging now at peak tide. I prayed for any feeble roller to appear and send me to shore. My last wave made up for nothing, but I rode it without injuring myself or others, nor was further humiliated.
The score, based on a three wave minimum, left me feeling short two. I had ridden six waves in one hour, flopped one, gotten pounded from behind on a late take-off, ridden two zippy lefts and one fair right, and lost innumerable waves on the snaking. It was like hitting into the water hazard on the final hole in golf.
24 August 2009
In the evening of the Great Snaking, the swell registered 3.5 from the 180. Sunday morning, I ferried produce to the farmers market, built the stall with O and Katy and left with John at 10. Phaneuf determined from various detailed reports that Hollywood was out, Hueneme was out, the wind forecast was miraculously not showing up, and that there was a big contest at Shores. So it was to be Nuckles on a burgeoning tide, which was suitable. After my last rising tide go-out at Ventura Point I was not ready to subject myself to another crowded moment in the washtub.
Ojai State Beach was a paradise of glassy surf as we hove to, next to Brian Hugheart, an old friend of John’s. Brian and I are the same age more or less. Brian had given John his first board and dated his sister. Brian has an 8 foot fish that seems like a nice template to try. Wide and dense with foam. The waves are about as good as it gets. We are specifically more towards Trader Joes than Nuckleheads. Its all going off between two and four feet, head high or bigger on the set waves. Phaneuf suggests that riding these semi-closeouts will sharpen our “ chops” when the winter arrives. Lots of people lots of peaks. I get a enough waves to redeem my bent soul from yesterday and then put some in the bank . The lefhanded drops yield excitement.. If the place needs a name later I can always call that medium bar Redemptions. There is a big dip in the asphalt down there I nearly rolled into once.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Surf Report (Flat)
SURF REPORT
16 August 2009
Sunday: Don’t see how it could be flatter. A 3.3 out of the 315 at nine seconds unimportantly rolls down towards Colnett. And a point nine creeps out of the feeble south. Models promise waves next weekend. Some swell is already in the water, near Johnston Island. But I think the best way to look at it is that its fine to have a forecast and know all you can know, but to not pin your hope to the model.
Was going to go down on Friday with Otter and Prince but even Surfline said it wasn’t rideable, and they’re in the business of making sure people keep surfing so their advertisers can sell leashes and wax and wetsuits, so it had to be miserable. Otter looked at four other sites, like Wetsand, hoping one of the Cassandras will tell him what he wants to read. Saturday was not worth looking at. I picked the hell out of the farm instead. Needed two trucks to transport it all to the farmers market. Watermelon be bulky.
B
Surf’s been miserable for three-four days. The south died off on Tuesday, unridden. Pha-lat. Pancake lumberyard flat. Don’t make much difference how much hoo-haw the prognosticators make about the Mendocino Gradient or some big blow off the Ross Ice Shelf generally, we wait around until its here and then we jump it and then it wanes and we go back to breaking down boxes and watering our abandoned landscaping.
Ordered:
2x banana
Romaine
3x Spring mix
peeled garlic
yam
2x avocado
I wonder if I would go to The Farmer and The Cook regularly if I did not own it. I like the food, but would it be the same without me or my wife? I probably would have gone there all the time until they 86ed me for always trying to pick up on the hot teenagers I hire. I don’t hire them because they are hot. My wife and I share the responsibility, but I do tend to hire hot over plain. Some of my fellow leches give me the thumbs up when we have brought aboard an exceptionally nubile co-ed, and then it gets embarrassing because I have to explain the truth, but it sounds like one of the all-time lamest lies or just crazy.
Something like “ Well, she said she wanted her own business someday.”
Went down on Tuesday in the dusk with Phaneuf and Seed and it was El Punko. John pitched the ball for his dog until Seed would run no more. Piss wind on chilled fog and no swell. Felt like November. Watched from the kelpy sand at Mondos as three guys cruised the ankle-high ripples from some dead storm to the south.
Next day, John worked with Francis O’Neil and I tried to fix the tomato drier. Ran to Ventura Electric and bought the world’s most expensive fuses, then up to Nuckleheads for a check. I figured if I had to whiz soon I may as well avail of the Nuckle Porta-John. It was pure crumb-bumb. I wrote Phaneuf, telling him he “wouldn’t surf it with Rob Lowe’s stick.” Congratulated myself for hours on how clever that was. On my way back from a fruitless search for plexiglass at Huge Hardware, he writes back:
“ Last night just made me need to stay away.”
16 August 2009
Sunday: Don’t see how it could be flatter. A 3.3 out of the 315 at nine seconds unimportantly rolls down towards Colnett. And a point nine creeps out of the feeble south. Models promise waves next weekend. Some swell is already in the water, near Johnston Island. But I think the best way to look at it is that its fine to have a forecast and know all you can know, but to not pin your hope to the model.
Was going to go down on Friday with Otter and Prince but even Surfline said it wasn’t rideable, and they’re in the business of making sure people keep surfing so their advertisers can sell leashes and wax and wetsuits, so it had to be miserable. Otter looked at four other sites, like Wetsand, hoping one of the Cassandras will tell him what he wants to read. Saturday was not worth looking at. I picked the hell out of the farm instead. Needed two trucks to transport it all to the farmers market. Watermelon be bulky.
B
Surf’s been miserable for three-four days. The south died off on Tuesday, unridden. Pha-lat. Pancake lumberyard flat. Don’t make much difference how much hoo-haw the prognosticators make about the Mendocino Gradient or some big blow off the Ross Ice Shelf generally, we wait around until its here and then we jump it and then it wanes and we go back to breaking down boxes and watering our abandoned landscaping.
Ordered:
2x banana
Romaine
3x Spring mix
peeled garlic
yam
2x avocado
I wonder if I would go to The Farmer and The Cook regularly if I did not own it. I like the food, but would it be the same without me or my wife? I probably would have gone there all the time until they 86ed me for always trying to pick up on the hot teenagers I hire. I don’t hire them because they are hot. My wife and I share the responsibility, but I do tend to hire hot over plain. Some of my fellow leches give me the thumbs up when we have brought aboard an exceptionally nubile co-ed, and then it gets embarrassing because I have to explain the truth, but it sounds like one of the all-time lamest lies or just crazy.
Something like “ Well, she said she wanted her own business someday.”
Went down on Tuesday in the dusk with Phaneuf and Seed and it was El Punko. John pitched the ball for his dog until Seed would run no more. Piss wind on chilled fog and no swell. Felt like November. Watched from the kelpy sand at Mondos as three guys cruised the ankle-high ripples from some dead storm to the south.
Next day, John worked with Francis O’Neil and I tried to fix the tomato drier. Ran to Ventura Electric and bought the world’s most expensive fuses, then up to Nuckleheads for a check. I figured if I had to whiz soon I may as well avail of the Nuckle Porta-John. It was pure crumb-bumb. I wrote Phaneuf, telling him he “wouldn’t surf it with Rob Lowe’s stick.” Congratulated myself for hours on how clever that was. On my way back from a fruitless search for plexiglass at Huge Hardware, he writes back:
“ Last night just made me need to stay away.”
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
SURF REPORT ( The DIP)
SURF REPORT
8 AUGUST 2009
We have credible data resources that assist in obtaining waves. Take “the dip”. We look at CDIP - AKA “the dip”- continually, for knowledge, to be reassured, and for a surprise. CDIP started on the computers and now its an icon on the Iphones. Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego operates the dip, which takes wave measurements at the buoy off Point Conception, then paints a revealing picture of what’s striking the Southern California bight.
Scripps is running a survey currently plumbing user comments. One of the questions I would pose is: “ Do you have CDIP as the start page on your browser?”
Or: “Do you have a special folder for all the CDIPs you have saved from specific swell events you have surfed?”
You’re basically hoping for yellow on CDIP, just a little yellow, though green is always good and because bronze would be too much to ask for, and red just might be more than you can handle. More on these colors, later, perhaps even in this report.
At a recent dinner party, Phaneuf sneaks a peek at the DIP between bites of sweet corn, then shows a seething 4.1 from the 175 to all interested attendees. Whoa ! The lemon fingers of Hurricane Felicia are reaching out between Anacapa and Point Mugu so seductively. We know better than to move forward into full prattle. One picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
The pros said she would not send it, but I knew she would when she stalled at 144 west and then did a little northerly wobble. It must be Felicia. there is only a ten second period between waves.
I should point out now that we A: speak in a number-infused jargon. And B: We have already written a comic piece based on the jargon, including tides, wetsuit thicknesses and water temps and all the rest. The 175 is a compass reading, in that if you go 360 you will hit the North Pole, a 180, the South Pole. A 175 is coming straight up into the south-facing Pacific shores of North America, and there are not many of them.
We know from Friday that small swells from the south are striking and forecast to peak over the weekend. The dip is going 3.1 from the 185. We know we have to pick for the farmers market early, but can finish up the onions and sort the potatoes after we surf. I get the basil out of the way, and acquiesce to parsley. Its been awhile since we took parsley, and we know we should haul a bit more variety to the market. We look so boring behind our commonplace mounds of potatoes, onions and squash. I have three hundred pounds of vine ripe tomatoes, but they’re so so what? We are not known as tomato people, and Cadwell has been selling the best heirlooms in the world since April. My little gestural tomato pile will add a bit of flash next to the cippolinis.
Phaneuf is already down by ten thirty watching that 185 strike the high tide Nucklehead bar and he wants to know what the hell is taking us. He textplains that the beach is packed with Winnebagos and Renegades sporting Jolly Rogers, so he actually is more towards Trader Joes than the Nuckle, but as Otterbein heaves to at the dusty riprap, we can see that we better grab what we can park in and that the whole beach has shoulder high peaks peeling sweetly left and right. There’s folks, but probably more waves than riders.
Water warm, waves frequent, tide perfect, glad I cut that old 3/2 off at the knee.
8 AUGUST 2009
We have credible data resources that assist in obtaining waves. Take “the dip”. We look at CDIP - AKA “the dip”- continually, for knowledge, to be reassured, and for a surprise. CDIP started on the computers and now its an icon on the Iphones. Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego operates the dip, which takes wave measurements at the buoy off Point Conception, then paints a revealing picture of what’s striking the Southern California bight.
Scripps is running a survey currently plumbing user comments. One of the questions I would pose is: “ Do you have CDIP as the start page on your browser?”
Or: “Do you have a special folder for all the CDIPs you have saved from specific swell events you have surfed?”
You’re basically hoping for yellow on CDIP, just a little yellow, though green is always good and because bronze would be too much to ask for, and red just might be more than you can handle. More on these colors, later, perhaps even in this report.
At a recent dinner party, Phaneuf sneaks a peek at the DIP between bites of sweet corn, then shows a seething 4.1 from the 175 to all interested attendees. Whoa ! The lemon fingers of Hurricane Felicia are reaching out between Anacapa and Point Mugu so seductively. We know better than to move forward into full prattle. One picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
The pros said she would not send it, but I knew she would when she stalled at 144 west and then did a little northerly wobble. It must be Felicia. there is only a ten second period between waves.
I should point out now that we A: speak in a number-infused jargon. And B: We have already written a comic piece based on the jargon, including tides, wetsuit thicknesses and water temps and all the rest. The 175 is a compass reading, in that if you go 360 you will hit the North Pole, a 180, the South Pole. A 175 is coming straight up into the south-facing Pacific shores of North America, and there are not many of them.
We know from Friday that small swells from the south are striking and forecast to peak over the weekend. The dip is going 3.1 from the 185. We know we have to pick for the farmers market early, but can finish up the onions and sort the potatoes after we surf. I get the basil out of the way, and acquiesce to parsley. Its been awhile since we took parsley, and we know we should haul a bit more variety to the market. We look so boring behind our commonplace mounds of potatoes, onions and squash. I have three hundred pounds of vine ripe tomatoes, but they’re so so what? We are not known as tomato people, and Cadwell has been selling the best heirlooms in the world since April. My little gestural tomato pile will add a bit of flash next to the cippolinis.
Phaneuf is already down by ten thirty watching that 185 strike the high tide Nucklehead bar and he wants to know what the hell is taking us. He textplains that the beach is packed with Winnebagos and Renegades sporting Jolly Rogers, so he actually is more towards Trader Joes than the Nuckle, but as Otterbein heaves to at the dusty riprap, we can see that we better grab what we can park in and that the whole beach has shoulder high peaks peeling sweetly left and right. There’s folks, but probably more waves than riders.
Water warm, waves frequent, tide perfect, glad I cut that old 3/2 off at the knee.
SURF REPORT (Bone Detail)
SURF REPORT
( 7 AUGUST 2009)
Bone Detail. That’s what the Iwo Jima Marine said they called interment ceremonies back then. Its not in the literature, and I am not sure I want it to be. Bone Detail. Cold, perfunctory task. Dig a hole, say some words, put the Marine in the hole. Shoot seven guns three times. The bugle plays taps. You go back to the barracks or to the club just down from the south gate and kill a pitcher with your buddies.
Prince and I got our ties on and chugged down to Oxnard to Richard Phaneuf’s funeral. Pisser’s got on a weird wool pork pie hat that only The P can pull off. He doesn’t need a jacket as long as he has that hat on. The conditions were pristine, by the way, especially for 1245 PM. The wee peek at Cobblestones was delicious. White water caressed the shore as we banged down 101 in The Beast. South showing. We had our boards in back because we were driving all the way to the coast. It’s a major rule. John Phaneuf thought he might even be able to go, even though it was his father’s funeral and huge family considerations weighed in. But he deserved to go, and it might be well to recharge and step back. The actual paddling out may be inappropriate, but there is no harm in thinking you might have a chance.
We were not too late for the ceremony at Santa Clara Cemetery. Began to cut across a lawn full of gravemarkers and wondered if certain manners where being ignored. There were 70 people graveside. Phaneuf was so sharp in his black suit he could have been an undertaker. Or a corpse. Borrowed a fancy Hugo Boss from a hereby anonymous friend. Monika was a beautiful mourner. She put herself down nicely by falsely bragging about her New York shoes being worth a month’s rent.
The service was too long to be considered perfunctory, but it was nonetheless rote. Prince and I wondered why the priest began to stroll around the crowd, still spouting, shouting to God with our backs to him. What went wrong when the lady Navy bugler fiddled with her electronic taps horn, which began to play the tinny recording before she could put the bugle to her lips? Bummer, honey. But the riflemen made up for it. Why did the ceremony suddenly turn makeshift, with tractors suddenly roaring up, hardhats doing things perhaps better suited to the suddenly disappeared clutch of fat officials? The confusion on handling Lt. Colonel Phaneuf’s ashes and sudden evaporation of protocol made the penultimate moment clumsy. Memo: devise something more subtle than a Case 2750 backhoe dumping dirt into the grave. And while were on it, the cemetery folks might fix up the east end of the grounds. It would be nice for those visiting the most recently deceased if they did not have to stare at an unkempt construction zone. The piles of dead branches are not symbolic. The good thing is there is obviously a lot of room left at Santa Clara for the rest of us.
Prince and I hit it to the yacht club for the reception. We both served long terms in Texas, and we can’t escape the lure of barbeque. Chased a seagull off the grill. I never had a Coors Light before. Had two. They are pretty good. Prince had seconds on the barbeque and explained that the French meaning for the word, which describes a steel spit entering a pigs mouth at the beard or barb end, and running straight through the animal to the que, or anus. I held off on the seconds.
We chatted and observed some USMC memorabilia. Lt. Col Phaneuf was a credit to his generation. Common people do not rise from enlistment private to battalion commander. I felt like I got enough from the event and feared becoming involved in too many vapid interchanges, and Pisser was ready to go so we flew to our errands, scored the shade cloth from American Horticultural and were two minutes late getting to Cal Pine for the boxes.
We drove back to Nuckleheads and watched the rollers crumble over on the broad sand at low tide. That south was definitely showing. I texted Phaneuf, telling him it would be good better-like in two hours, just in case everybody at the wake went their separate ways before the sun went down.
( 7 AUGUST 2009)
Bone Detail. That’s what the Iwo Jima Marine said they called interment ceremonies back then. Its not in the literature, and I am not sure I want it to be. Bone Detail. Cold, perfunctory task. Dig a hole, say some words, put the Marine in the hole. Shoot seven guns three times. The bugle plays taps. You go back to the barracks or to the club just down from the south gate and kill a pitcher with your buddies.
Prince and I got our ties on and chugged down to Oxnard to Richard Phaneuf’s funeral. Pisser’s got on a weird wool pork pie hat that only The P can pull off. He doesn’t need a jacket as long as he has that hat on. The conditions were pristine, by the way, especially for 1245 PM. The wee peek at Cobblestones was delicious. White water caressed the shore as we banged down 101 in The Beast. South showing. We had our boards in back because we were driving all the way to the coast. It’s a major rule. John Phaneuf thought he might even be able to go, even though it was his father’s funeral and huge family considerations weighed in. But he deserved to go, and it might be well to recharge and step back. The actual paddling out may be inappropriate, but there is no harm in thinking you might have a chance.
We were not too late for the ceremony at Santa Clara Cemetery. Began to cut across a lawn full of gravemarkers and wondered if certain manners where being ignored. There were 70 people graveside. Phaneuf was so sharp in his black suit he could have been an undertaker. Or a corpse. Borrowed a fancy Hugo Boss from a hereby anonymous friend. Monika was a beautiful mourner. She put herself down nicely by falsely bragging about her New York shoes being worth a month’s rent.
The service was too long to be considered perfunctory, but it was nonetheless rote. Prince and I wondered why the priest began to stroll around the crowd, still spouting, shouting to God with our backs to him. What went wrong when the lady Navy bugler fiddled with her electronic taps horn, which began to play the tinny recording before she could put the bugle to her lips? Bummer, honey. But the riflemen made up for it. Why did the ceremony suddenly turn makeshift, with tractors suddenly roaring up, hardhats doing things perhaps better suited to the suddenly disappeared clutch of fat officials? The confusion on handling Lt. Colonel Phaneuf’s ashes and sudden evaporation of protocol made the penultimate moment clumsy. Memo: devise something more subtle than a Case 2750 backhoe dumping dirt into the grave. And while were on it, the cemetery folks might fix up the east end of the grounds. It would be nice for those visiting the most recently deceased if they did not have to stare at an unkempt construction zone. The piles of dead branches are not symbolic. The good thing is there is obviously a lot of room left at Santa Clara for the rest of us.
Prince and I hit it to the yacht club for the reception. We both served long terms in Texas, and we can’t escape the lure of barbeque. Chased a seagull off the grill. I never had a Coors Light before. Had two. They are pretty good. Prince had seconds on the barbeque and explained that the French meaning for the word, which describes a steel spit entering a pigs mouth at the beard or barb end, and running straight through the animal to the que, or anus. I held off on the seconds.
We chatted and observed some USMC memorabilia. Lt. Col Phaneuf was a credit to his generation. Common people do not rise from enlistment private to battalion commander. I felt like I got enough from the event and feared becoming involved in too many vapid interchanges, and Pisser was ready to go so we flew to our errands, scored the shade cloth from American Horticultural and were two minutes late getting to Cal Pine for the boxes.
We drove back to Nuckleheads and watched the rollers crumble over on the broad sand at low tide. That south was definitely showing. I texted Phaneuf, telling him it would be good better-like in two hours, just in case everybody at the wake went their separate ways before the sun went down.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
SURF REPORT #7
SURF REPORT
SURF REPORT #7 ( 6 AUGUST 2009)
Burning hot since midday and been dry for eight days. A little wobbly from one too many McKiernan’s yesterday with Glazetron. If there is wet then I am for it. Cool water remedy. JPhan is working in Camarillo, no swell of note, good timing, but GPrince is ready and at four we begin our sojourn. We toy with the gore-point at the junction of 101 and the 33, deciding at last to go to Nucklehead because the wind is up, of course. Surfkites are out at lower Emma. The channel is whitecapping moderately under 15 knot breezes. Things don’t seem impossible. Drained at low tide, the Nuckle is chopped but rideable. We sit on the dirt shoulder watching the tiny turmoil, talking about the Pisser’s new greenhouse plans. The farther north we go, the better the conditions and the smaller the ‘swell’. We agree that planting basil and tomatoes will be adventurously experimental and sound fiduciary practice. We run to Javon, then all the way to Shores, sit on the sand in some wooden chairs there, reminiscing, then make a move to the Mitt, which is scudding on a low tide. Back to Nuckle. We text Phaneuf as usual along the way to keep him and his broad subscriber base fully informed on our surf-pathos. A select few may be able to glean vital data from our nuanced reports.
By now the tide has come up and there are windswell sets falling on the sandbars from Nuckles to Trader Joes. A few sloppy lefts evidence the 205-215 out there somewhere, gravely refracted as it slips through the channels. We have committed to a Three Wave Minimum. The sea is sloppy but not without form. When we get out, it’s suddenly shoulder high, but a five to six second period between waves means flat troughs and hard-to-catch mush, then a sudden dump. But there are no waves for miles to either side of us.
I’m a bit leery of committing to surf the dumpy mayhem on the heels of my last injury on the dreaded Nuckles bar, but I choose safely. Pisser nabs some decent waves. After a medium washer, I try to paddle back out only to be trashed by an eight wave onslaught that drives me nearly down to Emma. Where did this windswell come from? The current is rolling south. I paddle through and trek north, chasing GPrinze. Wanting to wring joy from a waist-high feebler, I ride to shore then splash for too long through another parade of dumpers marking out the zone. But we are giddy with the silliness and fortune. Nobody is surfing in Oxnard. Its good to be tired, to have dunked, to have been caught inside!. Justin pulls up while we are pulling off our wetsuits.
SURF REPORT #7 ( 6 AUGUST 2009)
Burning hot since midday and been dry for eight days. A little wobbly from one too many McKiernan’s yesterday with Glazetron. If there is wet then I am for it. Cool water remedy. JPhan is working in Camarillo, no swell of note, good timing, but GPrince is ready and at four we begin our sojourn. We toy with the gore-point at the junction of 101 and the 33, deciding at last to go to Nucklehead because the wind is up, of course. Surfkites are out at lower Emma. The channel is whitecapping moderately under 15 knot breezes. Things don’t seem impossible. Drained at low tide, the Nuckle is chopped but rideable. We sit on the dirt shoulder watching the tiny turmoil, talking about the Pisser’s new greenhouse plans. The farther north we go, the better the conditions and the smaller the ‘swell’. We agree that planting basil and tomatoes will be adventurously experimental and sound fiduciary practice. We run to Javon, then all the way to Shores, sit on the sand in some wooden chairs there, reminiscing, then make a move to the Mitt, which is scudding on a low tide. Back to Nuckle. We text Phaneuf as usual along the way to keep him and his broad subscriber base fully informed on our surf-pathos. A select few may be able to glean vital data from our nuanced reports.
By now the tide has come up and there are windswell sets falling on the sandbars from Nuckles to Trader Joes. A few sloppy lefts evidence the 205-215 out there somewhere, gravely refracted as it slips through the channels. We have committed to a Three Wave Minimum. The sea is sloppy but not without form. When we get out, it’s suddenly shoulder high, but a five to six second period between waves means flat troughs and hard-to-catch mush, then a sudden dump. But there are no waves for miles to either side of us.
I’m a bit leery of committing to surf the dumpy mayhem on the heels of my last injury on the dreaded Nuckles bar, but I choose safely. Pisser nabs some decent waves. After a medium washer, I try to paddle back out only to be trashed by an eight wave onslaught that drives me nearly down to Emma. Where did this windswell come from? The current is rolling south. I paddle through and trek north, chasing GPrinze. Wanting to wring joy from a waist-high feebler, I ride to shore then splash for too long through another parade of dumpers marking out the zone. But we are giddy with the silliness and fortune. Nobody is surfing in Oxnard. Its good to be tired, to have dunked, to have been caught inside!. Justin pulls up while we are pulling off our wetsuits.
Monday, August 3, 2009
SURF REPORT
S U R F R E P O R T
By STEVE SPRINKEL
SURF REPORT # 1 (26 July09)
Surfed out, and backbad, courtesy of extreme headfirst bailout on a Nucklehead wall on Sunday. The Swell of the Summer’s swan song, but it was still energetic. On the bail, just after plunging into the sucking trough, the wave folded over and whipped my hips around in a quick el-snappo. Over the falls went I for further humiliation. I knew the gravity of my error shortly thereafter. Memo: If you want to surf some more of the easier combers when you are 61, lay off the suicide beachbreak drops on your 9’6” when its dredging. Just because the young (45s) crowd wants to charge it on their skateboards, tis no challenge for the formerly crippled to take up at such a late date.
Planted 2200 corn plants with Francisco. Forgot to bring long pants. 11 rows 200 feet long. After knee-crawling like a Virgin of Guacamole penitent on the clods, knees could bleed. Remembering the ancient turquoise longjohn Chris Engle gave me, I cut it up with a dull knife and made some swift neoprene kneepads. I pigsweat in the pads, which filled with mud, but my ego was nearly as pleased as my knees with the invention. We laid the drip in short order and were mighty gratified.
SURF REPORT # 2 ( 28July09):
No surf. Actually little to no surfing. We are on the road to San Francisco. Flat from San Diego to Santa Cruz, modest sneaker south on the western exposure, hitting creekmouths and sandbars above Davenport to Half Moon Bay. Remember Waddel. We’d ride it. An itty crew out near Montara.
SURF REPORT #3 ( 29JULY09)
Common data reveals little to no surf available. In San Francisco, doing lip glances off the hills from Cole Valley to Hays Valley, paddling back out through thick latte. Though they got some peaks here, these valleys should be called coves because of their modest dimensions. But calling a place Noe Valley is sort of smart and romantic, as if this place needs any more of both. Back at the shack in Ashbery Heights. I can see the straights through the fog from the Purcell’s west window. No whitewater gargling on the far rocks of Marin.
SURF REPORT #4 (1 August 09)
A man on SF Craigslist in Pacifica has a balsa longboard he is selling for $500. We trade info. It’s a hollow-type Balsa Flite from Skip Kozminski in Ecuador. I decide its not going to be my new board because my surf budget is dedicated to a new 4/3 for the winter. I call as a courtesy. He is not there, hopefully out surfing. The Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the museum downtown rewrites her stature in the pantheon. She is showing with some Ansel Adams photos and a bit of same-period referential work by others. Afterward we cruise the Richard Avedon show ( Rogues Gallery of an evil time) and the permanent collection. Memo: Stop buying the Rauchenbergs and the Warhols. Those ideas are not worth the paint.
SURF REPORT#5 ( 2 August 09)
Driving down from SF, from Ocean Beach to Santa Cruz. We were looking for Auntie Trish’s rental deep in the Avenues and ran buy Mollusc, the fabled surfshop where Jeff and Tyler Manson once slept in the tower. O ran into inquire about Jeff. I drove around the neighborhood looking for parking. After ten minutes I came back to get her and hear her report. No Jeff, just some kids folding new Ts for sale. She told me breathlessly about the book she was reading in there about Bunker Spreckles. I knew Bunky when he was a mere grem, which usage should date that acquaintance properly. Bunker was my roommate at Webb Camp School in the San Juan Islands until he got kicked out for smoking cigarettes and mysteriously coming up with wine in his possession. The nearest store was half an hour away by car. We were fifteen. Bill Webb tried to deport Bunky, but his mom, Kay, was incognito in the South of France. Could not be reached. Traveling. So Buffalo Bill pitched a large Army tent out in a far field in order to sequester the miscreant millionaire. Bunky had figured that such brazen action would land him on a jet to Maui or La Jolla, but he had not figured his mom, who was as famous as most celebrities, could ditch him and go missing.
Just after Bunker started living in his tent I got caught up in a free-for-all and got one of my testicals smashed. The thing got as big as a grapefruit and eventually I moved out to the infirmary so the nurse could monitor my swelling and give me painkillers, which were adamantly required. The infirmary was the last building onsite, and just across the meadow from Camp Spreckles. In the evening, I remember reading The Old Man and The Sea and watching the shadows of various visitors painted on the walls of Bunker’s tent from across the meadow. Buffalo Bill’s punishment had backfired on him and he done built Bunky a den of iniquity.
Bunker had heard I was laid up and he snuck over one afternoon and talked with me through the screen. He was raring to be set free. Bunker made me show him my swollen ball, and he was really impressed. On my last day in the infirmary I hobbled bowlegged out to the tent to check on him. I felt sorry for him, marooned out there in the field. He was smoking a cigarette with another camper, who clumsily tried to hide his smoke. Bunker told him not to worry. I was cool.
I don’t believe I had ever been cool before. I had wanted to be cool, as most people yearn to be. But now that I had been defined by Bunky, who was entertaining and bore coolness in his sunburnt peeled nose, sunbleached hair, effecting beachy lingo, effortless cigarette huffing, I found my coolness repulsive. Bunky was already a sad case, a loser, adrift on a sea of money without the security of real affection.
I had some other coincidental moments with Bunker. I saw him on Ehukai Beach around the time he died. He overdosed, of course. He looked like a bloated barfly and was ranting like a stevedore, tossing his blonde mane around for full cinematic effect. His voice was unrecognizable from the 25 years that had intervened since our youth. I stepped up the beach as if to greet him, then turned and walked toward the parking lot. I had nothing to say. I had just gotten out of the water and did not want to dirty any part of me up.
Sometimes I say Sprinkel and people think they hear Spreckles. Sometimes I tell a story, sometimes I just say I am glad I am not.
Stunning conditions all the way down to Cruz. Not much swell, but a few sets especially at Montara and San Gregorio. Sunlit Tunitas is so charming but its normally blowing like hell, raining, or foggy with a sideshore piss wind. Waddel had some people out. Beaches curiously empty for such a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
SURF REPORT (3 August2009)
Barely breaking at Asilomar. The calm clarity of the day is revealed on satellite by the dry cut-off low spinning a few hundred miles to the west, keeping the fogbank in check.
Dallied at the Deer Haven Inn on Sinex, reading, writing. Wanted a Peete’s real bad, then ducked that chain-store for the East Village Café (498 Washington) which produces a fine cup o’chino. Tired pastry, but we are spoiled. Got another chino to go!
Up the 68 toward Salinas.Worked the Spreckles cutoff to 101, past the best farmland in the region. Yo, Bunky, you might have commanded all this farm instead of pissing it away with Dora at Impossibles. Its all the same, though, bro, I guess its all the same.
Spreckles, CA, 93962. California and Hawaii sugar ( C and H on the bag and box). Pioneered with sugar beets, now producing Tanimura’s lettuce and broccoli. We ran down through the Salinas Valley in full production. Huge teams of people harvesting into automated packing systems, probably twelve to fifteen people on a line. Promised ourselves to take the Jolon Road to Big Sur. Last Accomplished in 1971.
Pulled in at the Cal Poly SLO Organic Farm as they were just putting together their CSA. Chatted with Anastasia while she dandled her infant. They have done well and expanded.
Eating well in San Luis Obispo though is still untenable. We rummage our histories of medoicrity in the place and seize on a trip to provision at New Frontier aiming to picnic with Cesar in Pismo. We snare two heads of Romaine, a lemon, garlic, Parmesan, and some artisan organic bread named Provincio from Minneapolis. We were about to bag the old conventional standby from La Brea when O found the Provincio. $7.59 is an above average cost for superior value.
We are going with the price upgrades, and done with the fearful attitudes and cranky tone. Raise all the boats, and ignore the beurgeoise insistence to be cheap, aka affordable. Cheap benefits the mass producer. And this cheapness is draining the middle class down, as if they drink their own blood.
Rolling south past Avila, we spied a little beach access north of Pismo, in Shell beach and made our salad with anchovies from Boulets Larder with the impeccable Spanish Merola olive oil using the All Star organic smoked salt, all from the SaturdayFerry Farmers Market. We lazed on a comforter under the cypress and drank cold Per Bacco Pinot Grigio from De Palo’s store, ate the last of Golam’s dried persimmons from last fall and watched a southwest swell hit the little reef below while a personal water craft marred the silence with its querulous whine.
Everything south of there was flat until we got to Solimar. Justin and his friend were suiting up at Nuckles as we drove past.
We arrive at the Farmer and The Cook to discover further evidence of our drear un-professionalism. Its really too much to expect something like this to function because it is all done without design. Its like perpindicular sets of wheels on the same vehicle. One end thinks it making a turn, the other is still in the parking lot.
By STEVE SPRINKEL
SURF REPORT # 1 (26 July09)
Surfed out, and backbad, courtesy of extreme headfirst bailout on a Nucklehead wall on Sunday. The Swell of the Summer’s swan song, but it was still energetic. On the bail, just after plunging into the sucking trough, the wave folded over and whipped my hips around in a quick el-snappo. Over the falls went I for further humiliation. I knew the gravity of my error shortly thereafter. Memo: If you want to surf some more of the easier combers when you are 61, lay off the suicide beachbreak drops on your 9’6” when its dredging. Just because the young (45s) crowd wants to charge it on their skateboards, tis no challenge for the formerly crippled to take up at such a late date.
Planted 2200 corn plants with Francisco. Forgot to bring long pants. 11 rows 200 feet long. After knee-crawling like a Virgin of Guacamole penitent on the clods, knees could bleed. Remembering the ancient turquoise longjohn Chris Engle gave me, I cut it up with a dull knife and made some swift neoprene kneepads. I pigsweat in the pads, which filled with mud, but my ego was nearly as pleased as my knees with the invention. We laid the drip in short order and were mighty gratified.
SURF REPORT # 2 ( 28July09):
No surf. Actually little to no surfing. We are on the road to San Francisco. Flat from San Diego to Santa Cruz, modest sneaker south on the western exposure, hitting creekmouths and sandbars above Davenport to Half Moon Bay. Remember Waddel. We’d ride it. An itty crew out near Montara.
SURF REPORT #3 ( 29JULY09)
Common data reveals little to no surf available. In San Francisco, doing lip glances off the hills from Cole Valley to Hays Valley, paddling back out through thick latte. Though they got some peaks here, these valleys should be called coves because of their modest dimensions. But calling a place Noe Valley is sort of smart and romantic, as if this place needs any more of both. Back at the shack in Ashbery Heights. I can see the straights through the fog from the Purcell’s west window. No whitewater gargling on the far rocks of Marin.
SURF REPORT #4 (1 August 09)
A man on SF Craigslist in Pacifica has a balsa longboard he is selling for $500. We trade info. It’s a hollow-type Balsa Flite from Skip Kozminski in Ecuador. I decide its not going to be my new board because my surf budget is dedicated to a new 4/3 for the winter. I call as a courtesy. He is not there, hopefully out surfing. The Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the museum downtown rewrites her stature in the pantheon. She is showing with some Ansel Adams photos and a bit of same-period referential work by others. Afterward we cruise the Richard Avedon show ( Rogues Gallery of an evil time) and the permanent collection. Memo: Stop buying the Rauchenbergs and the Warhols. Those ideas are not worth the paint.
SURF REPORT#5 ( 2 August 09)
Driving down from SF, from Ocean Beach to Santa Cruz. We were looking for Auntie Trish’s rental deep in the Avenues and ran buy Mollusc, the fabled surfshop where Jeff and Tyler Manson once slept in the tower. O ran into inquire about Jeff. I drove around the neighborhood looking for parking. After ten minutes I came back to get her and hear her report. No Jeff, just some kids folding new Ts for sale. She told me breathlessly about the book she was reading in there about Bunker Spreckles. I knew Bunky when he was a mere grem, which usage should date that acquaintance properly. Bunker was my roommate at Webb Camp School in the San Juan Islands until he got kicked out for smoking cigarettes and mysteriously coming up with wine in his possession. The nearest store was half an hour away by car. We were fifteen. Bill Webb tried to deport Bunky, but his mom, Kay, was incognito in the South of France. Could not be reached. Traveling. So Buffalo Bill pitched a large Army tent out in a far field in order to sequester the miscreant millionaire. Bunky had figured that such brazen action would land him on a jet to Maui or La Jolla, but he had not figured his mom, who was as famous as most celebrities, could ditch him and go missing.
Just after Bunker started living in his tent I got caught up in a free-for-all and got one of my testicals smashed. The thing got as big as a grapefruit and eventually I moved out to the infirmary so the nurse could monitor my swelling and give me painkillers, which were adamantly required. The infirmary was the last building onsite, and just across the meadow from Camp Spreckles. In the evening, I remember reading The Old Man and The Sea and watching the shadows of various visitors painted on the walls of Bunker’s tent from across the meadow. Buffalo Bill’s punishment had backfired on him and he done built Bunky a den of iniquity.
Bunker had heard I was laid up and he snuck over one afternoon and talked with me through the screen. He was raring to be set free. Bunker made me show him my swollen ball, and he was really impressed. On my last day in the infirmary I hobbled bowlegged out to the tent to check on him. I felt sorry for him, marooned out there in the field. He was smoking a cigarette with another camper, who clumsily tried to hide his smoke. Bunker told him not to worry. I was cool.
I don’t believe I had ever been cool before. I had wanted to be cool, as most people yearn to be. But now that I had been defined by Bunky, who was entertaining and bore coolness in his sunburnt peeled nose, sunbleached hair, effecting beachy lingo, effortless cigarette huffing, I found my coolness repulsive. Bunky was already a sad case, a loser, adrift on a sea of money without the security of real affection.
I had some other coincidental moments with Bunker. I saw him on Ehukai Beach around the time he died. He overdosed, of course. He looked like a bloated barfly and was ranting like a stevedore, tossing his blonde mane around for full cinematic effect. His voice was unrecognizable from the 25 years that had intervened since our youth. I stepped up the beach as if to greet him, then turned and walked toward the parking lot. I had nothing to say. I had just gotten out of the water and did not want to dirty any part of me up.
Sometimes I say Sprinkel and people think they hear Spreckles. Sometimes I tell a story, sometimes I just say I am glad I am not.
Stunning conditions all the way down to Cruz. Not much swell, but a few sets especially at Montara and San Gregorio. Sunlit Tunitas is so charming but its normally blowing like hell, raining, or foggy with a sideshore piss wind. Waddel had some people out. Beaches curiously empty for such a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
SURF REPORT (3 August2009)
Barely breaking at Asilomar. The calm clarity of the day is revealed on satellite by the dry cut-off low spinning a few hundred miles to the west, keeping the fogbank in check.
Dallied at the Deer Haven Inn on Sinex, reading, writing. Wanted a Peete’s real bad, then ducked that chain-store for the East Village Café (498 Washington) which produces a fine cup o’chino. Tired pastry, but we are spoiled. Got another chino to go!
Up the 68 toward Salinas.Worked the Spreckles cutoff to 101, past the best farmland in the region. Yo, Bunky, you might have commanded all this farm instead of pissing it away with Dora at Impossibles. Its all the same, though, bro, I guess its all the same.
Spreckles, CA, 93962. California and Hawaii sugar ( C and H on the bag and box). Pioneered with sugar beets, now producing Tanimura’s lettuce and broccoli. We ran down through the Salinas Valley in full production. Huge teams of people harvesting into automated packing systems, probably twelve to fifteen people on a line. Promised ourselves to take the Jolon Road to Big Sur. Last Accomplished in 1971.
Pulled in at the Cal Poly SLO Organic Farm as they were just putting together their CSA. Chatted with Anastasia while she dandled her infant. They have done well and expanded.
Eating well in San Luis Obispo though is still untenable. We rummage our histories of medoicrity in the place and seize on a trip to provision at New Frontier aiming to picnic with Cesar in Pismo. We snare two heads of Romaine, a lemon, garlic, Parmesan, and some artisan organic bread named Provincio from Minneapolis. We were about to bag the old conventional standby from La Brea when O found the Provincio. $7.59 is an above average cost for superior value.
We are going with the price upgrades, and done with the fearful attitudes and cranky tone. Raise all the boats, and ignore the beurgeoise insistence to be cheap, aka affordable. Cheap benefits the mass producer. And this cheapness is draining the middle class down, as if they drink their own blood.
Rolling south past Avila, we spied a little beach access north of Pismo, in Shell beach and made our salad with anchovies from Boulets Larder with the impeccable Spanish Merola olive oil using the All Star organic smoked salt, all from the SaturdayFerry Farmers Market. We lazed on a comforter under the cypress and drank cold Per Bacco Pinot Grigio from De Palo’s store, ate the last of Golam’s dried persimmons from last fall and watched a southwest swell hit the little reef below while a personal water craft marred the silence with its querulous whine.
Everything south of there was flat until we got to Solimar. Justin and his friend were suiting up at Nuckles as we drove past.
We arrive at the Farmer and The Cook to discover further evidence of our drear un-professionalism. Its really too much to expect something like this to function because it is all done without design. Its like perpindicular sets of wheels on the same vehicle. One end thinks it making a turn, the other is still in the parking lot.
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